by Edoardo Nesi
Arianna lost all of those battles at the same time, when her mother — from the hospital bed she had ended up in after fainting in the kitchen, exhausted and worn out, pale as the moon but smelling, as ever, of Marseilles soap — asked her to comb her hair, then took her daughter’s hands, thanked her for everything she had done as if she were a nurse, reminded her to always stay close to Vittorio, and then turned her sharp gaze to the ceiling as if she wanted to go and settle the score with the disease in the other life. She closed her eyes and didn’t say another word. An hour later she was dead.
Chased by Vittorio, the boy in the plastic shoes has ended up over the baseline without having managed to pass the ball. He had stopped as he heard them shout “Out of bounds,” and now he is just standing there, immobile, with one foot on the ball. A halfhearted objection is raised. Vittorio says, “If the baseline runs in a straight line from the post, the ball is outside the line and, therefore, out of bounds.”
He is an excellent student, even if he spends most of his days in Mompracem exchanging stories with his fellow pirates under the shade of the fronds of a giant Ravenala palm, or exploring the Snaeffels crater in Iceland, or rounding Cape Horn, or invisibly crossing the seas on board the Nautilus, or perhaps flying to the moon in an aluminum spaceship shaped like a bullet, shot into space by a gigantic cannon powered by guncotton.
His team, of which he is captain and creator, is made up of six little boys who live in medieval palazzi in the historic center of the town, a far cry from the tiny houses of their adversaries, which look more like garages.
The captain of the Green Zone, Dino Citarella, would like to respond that, yes, the baseline is a straight line, okay, but it should also be an extension of the goal line and, as he now sees it with his back against the post, the straight line that starts from the goal should pass well to the left of the clump of grass the ball is resting on. He would like to add — because he is also an excellent student — that because the line extending from the goal line cannot be oblique, the ball is clearly and visibly in play: in short, it is in bounds.
But Dino is concerned that, if he says the word “oblique,” his friends — all of them not excellent students — will think he has become some sort of a nerd who uses big words, and then he doesn’t want to give in to those rich boys in their perfect set of white acrylic soccer uniforms with two diagonal blue-and-red lines that run from the right shoulder to the spleen and are the object of desire for the boys from the Green Zone, who play in their everyday shirts and corduroys and cannot understand how the other boys can be so rich as to own a football uniform that they only wear to play with them, on the field in front of their illegally built houses. Because they know their houses are illegal. They are told every day at school.
So, even though his father works for Vittorio’s father and he has been asked — ordered even — never to argue with the boys who come from the center to play soccer with them, when Vittorio asks his opinion — from captain to captain — Dino looks at his friends, all lined up waiting for him to speak, and feels entitled to represent and defend them at any cost, and answers that it is in — fuck, the ball is in.
At that same moment, Arianna shakes off her anguished thoughts and finds herself in the smoke-filled interior of her cream-colored Renault 5, alone, at sundown, in the middle of the Green Zone, and decides it’s time to go. She sounds her horn three times and all the boys turn to look at her as she struggles with the steering wheel during her maneuver.
Vittorio, gripped by the fear that his mother might get out of the car and start giving everyone orders, desperately proposes to kick the ball as high as possible, and start the last play after the rebound. Dino shrugs and agrees, because it’s not just the rich kids that have to go home — everyone does. He can see his mother watching him from the window, undoubtedly on the point of calling him in because it is nearly dark, and for a reason that is as deep-rooted as it is incomprehensible in a land without crime, no boy can stay out after sunset.
So Vittorio picks up the ball and kicks it as high as he can, as if he were a goalkeeper, and everyone runs after it: eight, nine boys, as fast as deer, racing after the ball that falls from the sky and bounces on the barren land that is as hard as cement. And the first one to reach it as it comes down is Ricky Mariotti, a boy with blond angelic curls and angular features who hits it with a full-force instep kick that sends the ball even higher, aimed straight at the Green Zone’s goal, which is defended by Tonino, the smallest kid of all. Tonino Citarella, Dino’s brother, an eight-year-old who, until that moment, had only stopped the ball with his feet and shins, and had taken no interest whatsoever in the trigonometry-inspired discussion on the angle of the hypothetical baseline, instead remaining seated in front of the goal with his legs crossed, engrossed in his own Sumerian game of letting the dust run through his closed fists as if they were hourglasses.
The ball — a gnarled, rough, rubber sphere adorned with the word “Yashin” in honor of the great Russian goalkeeper of the 1960s whom none of the boys had ever seen play — rises so high that Arianna sees it trace an arch through the sunset burning brightly behind the low, distant hills. It’s a brushstroke, a satellite, a signature that strokes the sky, and Arianna is inexplicably moved by the gratuitous beauty of the act, by the strength of the desire and the futility and the courage of that boy kicking the ball toward the faraway sky, as if laying down a challenge to it.
Tonino, called back by his brother’s voice, looks up and sees the ball falling toward him, immediately understanding the perfection of its trajectory. He stands up with his fists still clutching the dust, and hopes with all his heart that the sheer strength of that projectile will take it over the bar, because, even if he jumps up with his arms out and his fingers stretched as far as they can go — which would mean interrupting his Sumerian game — there is still at least a meter of light between his zenith and the bar. He is not even actually a goalkeeper: he is only there because the real goalie had to go with his father to deliver bags of lime mortar to a factory, and so he, the smallest of all, was called in, incredibly proud to be allowed finally to play with the big boys.
Tonino watches that white meteorite hurtling toward him, and worries about how much it would hurt the palms of his hands to stop that speeding projectile in the freezing cold that had overtaken the Green Zone after the setting of the sun, and he decides to try and knock it away, but the more he looks at the ball bearing down on him, the more he is convinced that you can’t stop a meteorite, and so he prays with all his might that the lob passes over the bar, also because he thought he heard them say it was the last play, so if the ball goes in, the other team would win and everyone would blame him even if it wasn’t his fault.
In that ever-prolonged moment Tonino also has the time to think that if he had a stone he could throw it at the ball, because he excels at throwing stones — he has killed sparrows with stones, broken windows from thirty meters away — but the Yashin is coming in and it is already on top of him, and so he jumps as high as he can, pushing out his body and his arms, and extends his fingers as far as they will go, putting aside his idea of punching the ball away and the Sumerian game, without a thought to the pain that he is about to feel, determined to do what needs to be done.
Arianna smiles as she watches that courageous little boy levitate toward the ball. Forty meters away, Ricky Mariotti watches incredulously the perfect trajectory of the lob he had kicked so high only because he was cold and didn’t want to run anymore but still wanted to win the game; and Vittorio stays perfectly still to watch that perfect kick, transfixed by the beautiful and rare and yet entirely inevitable event that is unfolding before his eyes — an inevitable miracle — and, like an old man, he asks himself when he will ever see anything like that again; and Dino, standing next to Vittorio, feels bad for his little brother, whom he had forced on the others when they had wanted to play without a goalkeeper and who will now be held responsible for that goal despite the fact no one could have ever saved it, exc
ept maybe Yashin, and yet he is heartened at the sight of his grasshopper of a brother stretching himself out to his limit, and his extended arm with a permanently grazed elbow isn’t all that far from the Yashin that enters the goal, whistling like a missile, oblivious to every human desire or weakness, and immediately bounces and rises up once more, right over the lopsided wall of perforated bricks one meter behind the goal, and disappears from the boys’ view forever, as if weren’t a soccer ball but a lightning rod thrown to earth by Jupiter himself.
A brief moment of absolute silence falls over the Green Zone only to be broken by Arianna, who lowers the car window and shouts loudly for Vittorio as all of his friends start to cheer and run to embrace Ricky Mariotti, who stands transfixed in the middle of the field with his hands immersed in his blond curls, incredulous and ecstatically happy.
Dino watches silently as the six rich boys cram into the cream-colored Renault 5 that accelerates in the dust and whisks them away in the blink of an eye. As the car’s rear lights grow dim and disappear into the darkness — because there are no streetlights in the Green Zone — he turns to his companions who stand in front of Tonino’s goal, immersed in a cloud of white breath.
A single star shines in the dark blue sky, and Dino asks himself how that star could be Venus. Isn’t Venus a planet?
— That was such a fluke!
— We can’t tell anyone that we lost to the rich kids…But, hey, they left us the Yashin! Let’s climb over the wall and get it!
— How much bloody money have they got, Dino?
Tonino, still on the ground after his great dive, is relieved and shocked that no one blames him for the goal. He takes his brother’s outstretched hand with a shy smile and stands up, shakes off the dust by slapping himself on thighs and buttocks, and then asks into his brother’s ear, “Dino, what’s money?”
AN OLYMPIC SWIMMING POOL
IT MIGHT BE DUE to his humble origins, or to the fact he had been taught many of the lessons of life by his father’s belt, but Pasquale Citarella was very easily embarrassed. At the slightest prompting, that portly, tireless, taciturn man would blush like a debutante: his face would flush, his ears would turn violet, and his gaze would fix on the reinforced toe caps of his work boots.
That morning it had already happened many times: When he arrived in the forecourt of Barrocciai Blankets in his farting Ape Piaggio. When he was forced to park in the only place his Ape wouldn’t be in the way of the trucks constantly moving in and out of the court, which happened to be the narrow spot between two brand-new blue Alfettas that undoubtedly belonged to the company’s owners. When he had to hide in the palm of his hand the Nazionale cigarette he had been smoking, and then extinguish it by scraping the end along the chassis of his Ape before putting the butt in his pocket, because he didn’t want to throw it on the floor in that pristine forecourt. When he was obliged to introduce himself in his paint-flecked overalls to the skinny, supercilious porter who magically appeared the minute he had attempted to park between the Alfettas. When he had to explain to the porter that he was expected (that’s what Vezzosi had told him to say) by Mr. Barrocciaio. When the porter corrected him with a sneer, telling him that the correct name was Barrocciai, with an i at the end, in the Tuscan style, not with an o as was more common in the South where he was from, in the heel of Italy’s boot.
Pasquale was embarrassed once again and most of all when he was asked if he was expected by Mr. Ardengo or Mr. Ivo Barrocciai, because Vezzosi had not specified, and he had to answer that he didn’t know. And he was also embarrassed when the porter abruptly ordered him to follow, led him up a steep flight of stairs, and then down a corridor of well-buffed blue tiles to an office where an elegant man with a great mane of white hair wearing a blue jacket, a light-blue shirt, and a yellow tie sat at a large desk. He had been speaking on the telephone in a foreign language, and as he heard the footsteps come to a halt outside his door, he turned to look at Pasquale with an inquisitive air before gesturing to him to stay put and keep quiet.
This series of successive embarrassments had not given his face the time to return to its normal color, and so the redness had fixed itself to his cheeks as if it were permanent. He tried to calm himself, but his heart was beating fast. He pretended not to look around him, his hands wrapped tightly around the cycling cap carrying the logo of a mortar company, waiting for that elegant older gentleman to finish his telephone call in that unfamiliar language, and he jumped when the man abruptly put the phone down and began shouting in a loud voice.
— Franchina! Franchina! Come here, quickly! And who might you be?
— I’m the painter.
— We don’t need a painter. Absolutely not! Who sent you?
— I work for Mr. Vezzosi.
— Ah, you must be here to see Ivo, not me. Come, I’ll take you to the provisional offices of Barrocciai Textiles.
The gentleman rose from his chair and led Pasquale along the corridor to a door that opened onto a steel platform that hovered above the empty space of the company’s small warehouse, at the center of which was a cubicle made of glass, metal, and white plastic, divided into two sections.
In the first section, two young women sat opposite one another, each holding a telephone to her ear, on desks so close there was hardly any space to pass between them. In the other section, a younger version of Barrocciai the elder was gesticulating wildly in front of Cesare Vezzosi, who sat with his head down.
Ardengo began to walk down the narrow steel staircase, and Citarella followed. When they arrived at the cubicle, Ivo saw them and pointed them out to Vezzosi, who turned around and gestured for Pasquale to come and join them.
— They are always on the phone here, Ardengo said. He opened the door, let Citarella in, closed the door, then started back up toward the steel staircase, slowed ever so slightly by a mild limp.
Now alone before those opposing desks, facing the prospect of having to walk sideways like those figures in Egyptian hieroglyphics to get through the narrow gap, Pasquale froze and stood there listening to the two young women — one fairly robust with chestnut curls, the other blond and pale, prettier — talking away in two different languages. He couldn’t move forward or backward, so he turned to look at the old Barrocciai cut diagonally across the warehouse floor and nod at Carmine Schiavo — the young, bearded, Castro-supporting warehouse worker whom Pasquale also knew because he too came from Ariano Irpino, his hometown in Campania. The old gentleman slipped past a pile of brown blankets stacked neatly on the shelves and stretched out his arm to touch them as he walked past. Was it a caress?
When he heard his name being called again by Vezzosi, Pasquale had to overcome his embarrassment and squeezed his way between the desks of the two young women, apologizing profusely and receiving death stares in return, finally arriving at the glass door that opened onto the partition of the cubicle that was Ivo Barrocciai’s office, almost entirely occupied by a splendid desk in rosewood, so big as to arouse the suspicion that the cubicle had in fact been built around it.
Vezzosi gestured for him to come in, sit down in the uncomfortable plastic seat next to him, and keep quiet. Barrocciai was on the phone, his elbows resting on a large blueprint that took up the entire table.
— Thank you, sir. Thank you again…Yes, I’ll get them to you right away. I’ll send one of the girls…Yes. All of them, absolutely. I will send them all. Perfect. Of course. All of this week’s invoices.
He rejoiced, clenching his fist in the air.
— Foreign, yes. They are all in German marks…Absolutely. I know, I know that foreign invoices are twice as valuable…
Vezzosi whispered into Pasquale’s ear.
— Pasquale, once you’ve painted, you need to air out…Today at the Den I thought I was going to suffocate while I was screwing…He brought his hand to his throat and mimed being strangled to death.
Pasquale was so unsettled at hearing him speak in that way in front of a businessman that he could only nod. H
e had closed all the windows because he didn’t want Vezzosi to find that small, unfurnished room too cold.
— One day I can lend you the Den, if you like. So you can finally get laid, too. Don’t you have any pussy?
Pasquale shook his head, now overwhelmingly embarrassed.
— I thought not…Well, if one day somehow you should ever find some, you can fuck her at my place, okay? He stopped to stare at the painter.
Pasquale turned to look at Cesare, then nodded again.
— But wait, if you go there, your hair will be all over the place. And hers, too, because I bet you love hairy women…You’ll have to wash all the sheets and pillowcases, or even boil them. No, better still, burn them…You’ll need a flamethrower.
Vezzosi smiled with wolfish eyes and slapped Pasquale on the back.
— My father is well, thank you, very well indeed. Every so often he comes down to see what I’m up to. He was here a moment ago. He just left the office…Yes, yes, he’s happy. Very. Perhaps even a little proud. Let’s hope so…Thank you, sir. See you soon, all the very best…goodbye, goodbye…
Ivo hung up and pointed his index finger at Cesare.
— Sorry, Cesare. One more second. Gabriella!
The young woman appeared at the door, in the glowing health of her twenty-two years.
— Take all the invoices to the bank. They’re going to advance them today.
— Fine. Listen, Ivo, there’s another order from Austria. They want to try the loden.
— Excellent!
— Right, I’m off to the bank.
— Good girl.
The young woman smiled briefly at Cesare, threw an inquisitive glance toward Citarella, and left.
— We’re going to have to start hiring people. And we’ll need to rent a warehouse. Immediately. We can’t go on working like this.
He looked at Cesare and pointed at the blueprints.
— However, Cesare, as for this, it’s just not right. No, no…I’m sorry, but it’s really not there. It will have to be entirely redone, from scratch.
